Awesome Machines

Electric pencil sharpeners are plenty fast. But say you have 100 pencils to sharpen. Shaving a second or two off of each pencil can add up. Current Concept wanted to see how quickly a pencil could be sharpened by rigging up an off-the-shelf sharpener to various power tools. That exposed sharpener mechanism looks terrifying once it gets up to speed.

Despite the name of Akiyuki’s latest LEGO Great Ball Contraption module, it doesn’t involve minifigures grinding on poles for tips. To transport balls from one end to the other, it carries them to an upper ramp using LEGO worm gears and hockey sticks. A ready-to-build kit is available from Build A Moc or you can buy just the instructions from Planet GBC.

Jared Owen presents another fascinating animation of a complex machine—or, in this case, multiple machines working together. In this video, he walks us through the automated donut factory, which you can find at many Krispy Kreme locations. These machines can crank out up to 3000 donuts per hour. Our favorite part is the glaze waterfall.

This electromechanical plaything from Nikola Toy automatically steadies itself and balances on its point. Its curved Reuleaux triangle shape allows it to teeter while sensors, circuitry, and a spinning wheel help hold its position. It also has built-in RGB LED lighting.

After the guys from the Hydraulic Press Channel got their new 300-ton press, they built an industrial-strength bunker around it to protect themselves and their workshop from flying debris. With the bunker in place, they used the machine to compress some large springs to see if they could make them go flying. It’s surprisingly harder than it looks.

A gravity well is a cone-shaped device that pulls marbles or other small balls into its center like a vortex. JBV Creative built a version of a gravity well connected to an elevator, so as spheres drop through its middle, they head back up to the top and start their journey all over again. It’s incredibly satisfying once he drops thousands of steel balls into it.

We like to make our own sandwiches. But a store-bought sandwich might have to do when you’re in a pinch. This video from How It’s Made takes us inside a factory that cranks out sandwiches, where humans and machines work hand-in-robo-hand to create lunches for thousands every day. Yep, there’s a robot designed solely to apply mayonnaise.

A while back, we checked out a complicated machine that used LEGO Technic parts to pull a chain around a bunch of gears. That one was built by Brick Technology. The Brick Machines took the idea and expanded on it with a ridiculously complicated machine driven by a continuous chain built from 1,184 LEGO chain links.

After testing various LEGO door mechanisms, the Brick Experiment Channel is back with another series of engineering tests using LEGO and Technic parts. While most of their brick-built elevator and lift designs are motorized, one of them runs on pneumatic power. That scissor lift and rotating lift inspired by Scotland’s Falkirk Wheel are really neat.

This machine is moving so quickly that it’s hard to believe how much it is doing. The high-speed blow molding system can crank out and quality test roughly 45,000 bottles per hour – that’s 750 bottles per minute. We need The Slow Mo Guys to stop by this factory with their high-speed camera.

The Karakuri Channel loves to make unique mechanical art. This time, they designed and built a gadget that turns nearly 300 brass nails into a moving wave. To make it work, they removed the tip of each nail and attached a sleeve and a ball bearing. A motor turns interchangeable discs against the balls to create wave patterns. Watch with subtitles.

Want some freshly-cooked rotisserie chicken? These guys have set up the ultimate chicken cooking operation, featuring a variety motorized wheels and carousels that each cook dozens of chickens over an open fire. We’re not sure why every machine is different, but they all seem to get the job done.

We’ve featured the hypnotic fluid creations of artist Roman De Giuli before. In this video, he demonstrates the Emitter – a custom-engineered machine that uses stepper motors to pump and drip colorful pigments into water. The resulting designs are still organic but exhibit a rhythm and repetition not seen in De Giuli’s earlier works. Shot in 8K HDR at 60 fps.

Inspired by Colin Furze and his tea-making Rube Goldberg machine, engineer James Bruton wanted to make his own overly complicated contraption for fixing drinks. Bruton’s TEA-800 beverage dispenser is triggered by a large ball bearing that activates various parts of the machine. It gradually moves a mug into position and fills it with hot water, brews a tea bag, and adds milk.

Engineer James Bruton has been experimenting with designs for a unique tank with treads that twist like a Möbius strip. After an earlier design that struggled with steering, his revised tank can bend at its center to drive around corners. It’s not a particularly practical design, but it sure is cool to watch in action.

We’ve seen machines that can draw patterns in sand, but this is the first time we’ve spotted one that was built using LEGO Technic components.  Brick Machines created this sand art machine with a magnetic assembly that moves along a set of custom aluminum rails using corkscrew gears driven by a Mindstorms controller and tech from PyBricks,

The Hydraulic Press Channel goes back to basics by showing off their latest tool of destruction, The Impaler 10,000,000. This custom-made press tool has a pointy tip and a matching base, allowing it to poke holes, crush, and extrude objects until they surrender to its force. It’s really good at juicing fruit, too.

We’ve seen a complicated machine that creates springs by bending stiff wire, but this machine appears to be a bit simpler. It’s fascinating to see how it twirls the metal into a perfect spring by feeding it through a small opening and pressing it against an angled tool to bend it.

It’s been a long time since we needed floppy disks to store data. But we still enjoyed watching this retro factory video posted by StirlingEngineering, which shows how they used to produce 3.5″ floppies. It’s a satisfying 5-minutes sequence of mechanical ear candy.

We’ve been up close with some of the impressive land-moving and construction equipment that Caterpillar makes. MetaBallStudios sizes up these alongside some even bigger machines, including giant excavators, cranes, and earth movers that make even the 51.5 foot-tall CAT 797F mining truck look like a miniature.

There’s a good reason that pinball machines are so expensive. These hand-assembled games incorporate multiple circuit boards, complicated wiring harnesses, and hundreds of parts. Technology Connections starts with a brief look at a 1990s pinball machine, then dives in deep to explain the amazing engineering of a vintage electromechanical machine.

Get your daily dose of engineering porn with this video from Uwe Krumm GmbH. The company makes precision tooling for manufacturing, including the press brake tools shown here. It’s a hypnotic and satisfying 6-minute sequence of sheet metal being bent into complex shapes through the simple application of force.

We can’t think of any practical reason you’d need a car jack that fits in the palm of your hand. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. Maker B took the time to craft a 1/5th-scale hydraulic jack from steel, brass, and copper. It not only looks amazing, but the tiny jack is fully functional. Maybe he can use it to change tires on an R/C car.